Week 15: Revision

After having more knowledge on comic books this semester, I decided to revise this week's blog post.  I feel that now, after having more exposure to the medium, I am able to understand more the medium.  Carl Bark definitely was the the inspiration to many of the comic (and animation) artists today.

I think the biggest precedent Carl left for this medium were his strong storytelling poses and his visual style.  A lot of animation artists can definitely take inspiration from Carl, especially since his characters look so similar to the world Wal Dsiney would create anyways.  But his drawings are perfect for what animators need to see: clear poses that are a quick read.  For example, you can take out the words from the comic below and still understand what's going on very clearly.

TinTin is another comic book that follows this way of being very visual in its storytelling.  Similar to Bark's work, TinTin has a dry humor to it that is still very apparent even if you don't read all of the words.  You can see the direct evolution from comic strips to comic books, especially in the form of short gags like this:

Gags like that within TinTin are still very reminiscent  of the comic strip era, yet I argue that the early comic books are an evolved version of this because now this gag correlates with an overarching story.  I think that it can be argued that TinTin is even more evolved that Bark's work, since we see more experimentation with the panels and how they're laid out.

Ultimately, these comic books would sent the precedent for sequential storytelling and their influence has been so impactful on future comic artists and animation artists alike.